Things that Make Me Go "Why?"

[seawasp]

In this day and age, if you spend lots of money and reasearch work to produce a fancy several-hour TV special with tons of special effects, why would you NOT sell the DVD?

There's several things in that category, but the one that perhaps puzzles me the MOST is National Geographic's "Extraterrestrial" special. I find it incomprehensible that they haven't yet released this quite interesting speculative special on DVD. It would seem to be a no-brainer -- make special, sell DVDs. The longer you wait, the LESS you sell, in general.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

In two words: "copyright clearance."

Unpack that?

[seawasp]

Are you saying National Geographic doesn't have copyright clearance to publish its own stuff???? Or that despite being branded as "National Geographic" it's actually not theirs? And if it isn't, then (A) whose IS it, and (B) why havent THEY (whoever They are) released it?

Re: Unpack that?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Did National Geographic send a cameraman to the moon? If so, who do you think filmed those lunar landings?

(This sort of thing hit the Hitler^WHistory Channel -- it's why most of their documentaries stop after about 1945 -- pre-war, there's a lot of out of copyright footage, and during the war all that Nazi stuff was explicitly ejected from copyright, but post-war, folks remember shooting those reels and they want their royalties, please. And they often have insanely inflated ideas of what a given piece of footage is worth.)

Re: Unpack that?

[seawasp]

Well, I can see it in those cases (though in the case of the Moon, that's NASA footage and I thought it basically was either free or very cheap to use for any American organization), but in this case the "Extraterrestrial" special is essentially all manufactured footage. I would have thought that any company that both airs AND sells movies of that sort would have made sure that they had the rights to the special outright.

Re: Unpack that?

[k-kinnison.livejournal.com]

I think that most people who do work for "National Geographic" are doing it mainly because NG focuses on Education and Research and not profit. A lot of the money that goes into its programs are from Grants and donations. msot of the grants coudl easily have a "not for profit" clause in them which prevents the mass merchendising of its programs.